


Location: A Dim Sum Bar, Beijing.

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 12:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20008483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: Ten years after the Apocalapse. Things have not gone quite where they had seemed headed.Aziraphale is out to resolve it. But--he's not so different from God. He keeps his cards hidden well.





	Location: A Dim Sum Bar, Beijing.

They crossed paths for the first time since the weeks after the Apocalapse in Beijing. It had been ten years.

“Long time no see,” Crowley said in casual, jaunty Mandarin, missing perfect inflection but proving understandable.

“I regret to have been busy of late,” Aziraphale responded, in far more formal, antique Mandarin. “And you?”

“Horse-horse, tiger-tiger—I’m so-so,” Crowley drawled. “Keepin’ busy. No rest, and so on. You know how it is.”

Aziraphale lifted one shoulder. His pale, fair face was still. “I know how it was. Once.” He looked around, flagged a waiter, and ordered a spread of Cantonese dim sum, currently popular in the capital. He glanced at Crowley. “They do superb xiā cháng fěn. Made in-house. You should have some. They’re nice.”

Crowley grimaced, crinkling his nose and twisting his frown. “Nice,” he snipped, his voice a mockery of the angel’s. “Does everything have to be ‘nice’ with you?”

Aziraphale blinked surprise, then gave a haughty Celestial sniff and cocked his nose up. “Not everything has to be, but it’s a good place to start,” he snipped back. “A principle you once understood.” He opened a beautifully cared for doctor-style bag in buttery brown leather and removed a small case. From the case he withdrew a pair of silver and jade chopsticks and a chunky little jade chopstick rest. He placed them in perfect alignment by his place setting. Then he checked the pot of tea the waiter had delivered earlier. He glanced sideways at the demon. “I have a spare cup, if you’d like some. It’s a superb oolong.”

The demon hesitated, clearly reluctant to agree…then he gave in. “Well, oolong. Wouldn’t want you to think I’d passed up a good oolong.”

“I’ll play mother.” Aziraphale picked up the pot to pour.

“That’ll be the day,” Crowley grumbled under his breath.

“What’s that? I heard that. What was it?”

“If you heard it you’d know.”

Aziraphale gave a sulky little huff, but handed the cup of tea to Crowley with great ceremony. As the waiters began to arrive with the first wave of dim sum, he quickly asked for a new place setting for his friend—and began to add dishes to the order.

The demon failed to object, though he seldom ate much. He sipped lazily at the tea cup and pretended not to watch the angel sitting prim and proper on the edge of his chair.

“Looking fit,” he said, his voice neutral to disapproving. “Gabriel bully you into losing weight?”

“I don’t talk to Gabriel much anymore. As you’d know if you bothered to answer any of my messages. Here—have a longevity peach. The lotus paste filling is excellent.” He picked up a blushing and tender trompe-l’oeil peach in his chopsticks and offered it to Crowley. “Eat—eat. I’m not the only one who's lost weight, and my figure could afford it. It’s a wonder no one’s mistaken you for Death yet.” The peach hovered in mid-air, a treat for a baby bird.

“How do you know they haven’t?” Crowley asked, voice sardonic. But even as he snapped, he also leaned forward and snapped up the little peach. His face lit. “Yeah—good. I don’t know how you do it—but you find the good stuff.”

“I look for it,” Aziraphale said, dryly. “So—what brings you to Beijing, now that you’re out of the business of making trouble.”

Crowley snorted. “Who says I’m out of the business? No, no—gone freelance, that’s all. Took a look at what Coyote and Reynard and Loki and Eris get up to. Lot more fun this way.”

Aziraphale clucked. “A chance to start over—and you get more entrenched. You do realize that God has given us both special treatment? This could be your chance to get back into Her good graces.” In spite of the scold, he picked up another treat from the dim sum selection, dipped it in a sauce bowl, and once again held it out, a mother bird tending a precious chick…

The demon’s lean, wide mouth opened. Pop! Down the hatch. A plump, pink, slightly forked tongue came out and cleaned up, checking for juice in the corners of the lips. “Mmm. Good one. Whossit?”

“Mussel fritter dipped in lime and soy.”

One corner of the demon’s mouth crooked up, and one brow flew over the frame of the dark glasses. “Going to convert me to seafood if it takes eternity, angel?”

“It’s nice,” Aziraphale said, primly. “AND sustainable. What kind of mischievous wiles did you have in mind? Anything I need to thwart?”

“Still thwarting? It’s not enough God loves you and wants you to be happy and sell a scant few books and drink craft beer?”

“Still thwarting, dear boy. If God approves the way we worked in the last melodrama, She’s…” He stopped, blushing, then said, gruffly. “I shouldn’t judge, I suppose. A mere Principality, after all. Not up there with the Seraphim and Cherubim. Not even the Thrones and Virtues. But—I find I like the Ineffable Plan more than I did the Written Plan. It’s easier to want to serve Her if she’s this kind of Ineffable.”

Crowley turned his face away, showing off his beaky profile and the wrap-around black of his shades. Just as gruffly he said, “Don’t see that any fewer people die, angel.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “It feels more about what kind of choices we make, and why, this way. Don't you think? Not just whether we’re kissing the right bums and being…obedient. There’s more room to pick sides.”

The words hovered between them, whispering of their own one side—the side that had seemed to disappear the moment they reached for it, ten years before.

“Still backing God, though. Aren’t you? Nice, Angel. Always so nice.”

“A God who seems less…committed to Heaven or Hell, these days.” Aziraphale gingerly picked up a soup dumpling, sucked the liquid innards out of it with the neatness of an experienced dumpling-vampire, then sucked down the tender skin. Only then did he say, softly, “After all—you’ve been able to go freelance, now. She could have stopped you. Or—allowed Satan to stop you. We both get to pick.”

“No fair,” Crowley said, voice petulant but also a bit shaken. “I’m not…nice, angel. It doesn’t fit.” When the angel said nothing, he shrugged. “All right. All right, I’ll admit—I do try to make sure no one gets hurt. At least, no one who doesn’t deserve it. And sometimes it’s fun to play a proper Raven and bring mankind fire. But don’t expect me to sprout white wings.”

“Heaven forfend,” Aziraphale said, laughter in his voice and shining from his eyes. He looked at Crowley with melting fondness. “I’ve missed you, you know.”

Crowley wouldn’t look at him—and as a result he was unaware of how lovingly the angel studied his profile—the shape of his skull. The turn of his ear. The arch of his nose and the curve of his jaw. The little black serpent mark that squiggled in tight flourishes from the point of his sideburn downward.

“I’m not a social creature,” Crowley said. “Bit of a lone snake. Yeah?”

Aziraphale failed to choke down an amused chuckle. “Whatever you say, dear boy.”

“Oi—bit of respect, there. Solitude’s my middle name.” He was bluffing, and blustering—and quite aware the angel was laughing at him. Tenderly—but, still, a demon had his dignity to think of.

“It can’t be your middle name,” Aziraphale said, reasonably.

“Can so.” Then, too curious not to ask, “Why not?”

“I have it on reliable authority your middle name is J. Which stands for J,” Aziraphale said, openly smiling—so bright and warm Crowley could have basked in it, had he so chosen. “Just J.”

The demon tried not to smile—and failed, drastically. He risked a glance angel-ward.

“You remembered.”

“I’m hardly going to forget basic things like that.”

“Did you get used to ‘Anthony’?”

“Yes.” The angel refused to admit that he most thought of the demon as “My dear,” though. Sometimes it was “my dear Anthony.” Sometimes it was “my dear Crowley.” On rare occasions it was “My dearest boy.”

But “my dear” always seemed to be the real core of the thing.

“What went wrong? Before?” he asked the demon.

Crowley turned, faced him, face drawn and sad. “I don’t know. Six thousand years of being more separate than together? Of not even letting ourselves know we were...friends? I wasn't used to banging elbows with you every morning. Didn’t know you sang ‘Muskrat Love’ in the shower. Heaven, angel—I didn’t know you took showers in the morning.”

The angel grunted a rueful agreement. “Ah. Yes. And I once believed you spared the plants you removed from your collection.”

“They’re just plants,” Crowley grumbled. “And they’re more afraid when you really do disappear the stupid things.” He studied laced fingers. Flipped his hands so he could crack all his knuckles. Flipped his hands back after. He didn’t admit he “disappeared” them to safe places where they’d thrive…

“They’re God’s creation, and precious.”

It had been so long since the angel had lectured him. He hid a smile, and shot back, “Oh, you mean like Lord Beelzebub? Or, for that matter, Gabriel?”

“They’ve had a fair say in their own marring,” Aziraphale snapped. “And God still cares about them, too.”

“Y’think?”

“She didn’t smite them, either. Didn’t smite us for rebelling—and didn’t smite them for failing to thwart us.”

“So?”

“So I deduce that maybe it’s not about sides. Maybe it’s about…”

“Mmmmm?” You could use skepticism that thick to grout walls and seal window frames.

“Maybe it’s about deciding for ourselves what ‘right and wrong’ are—and testing it ourselves. Instead of leaving it up to Her to make the rules and then test the premises for us.”

“Well she’s already failed ‘all good.’”

Aziraphale’s faith didn’t waver. He smiled. “Perhaps. In the meantime, it’s ineffable.”

We are supposed to see God in each other—the good God, the loving god, the tender God. It’s not always easy. But in that ineffable moment the angel’s eyes reflected those of a lone Dealer, performing unexpectedly adept magic tricks with a pack of cards, a white dove, and a blackbird.

And perhaps it was God who leaned over and placed a gentle, seductive kiss on the swirl of a black tattoo.

“Angel?” Crowley’s voice shook, and he pulled back.

“You’re not a loner, you know,” Aziraphale assured him. “Indeed, you’re far more extroverted than you realize.” Then he picked up a delicate sesame dumpling and fed it to the demon, fingers brushing an open, vulnerable mouth.

The demon’s fingers raced to his black serpent mark. Behind the glasses, his eyes were huge.

“It didn’t work last time,” he said.

“Maybe this time we shouldn’t move in together. Sleepovers might be nice.”

“I thought Heaven didn’t quite approve of that sort of thing,” Crowley croaked.

“And I no longer quite approve of Heaven. It all works out, if you think about it…”

Crowley looked at the plump, good little angel with melting fondness. “You’re so...nice,” he said, caught between love and exasperation.

The angel smiled and stood. He traced the black serpent with one finger, before snapping his fingers and filling the waiter’s pockets with gold.

“I know,” he purred. “I’m surprisingly good for a stone cold bastard. Love—I’ve waited ten years. Do you think, now, you’d be willing to come to bed?”

“Is that why you’re in Beijing? To seduce me?”

“It’s an evil job—but someone’s got to do it.” Then the angel winked.

Winked!

And the demon followed him all the way up to his hotel room, and didn’t leave again for days, and days, and days.


End file.
